Employees are a valuable resource when it comes to branding. Aside from building up the company from the inside and striving to meet business goals on a daily basis, employees have the capacity to further your brand and marketing plan in extraordinary ways. While the right form of content is critical in terms of engagement and effectiveness, the next step in the process is to create brand awareness. And that is where employees come in.

Generating brand awareness as well as trust and credibility in an effort to elicit a purchase or other behavior is a difficult task to accomplish. Businesses search far and wide for the latest hip new tactic to engage in branding with consumers, but are often too deep in the weeds to see their biggest branding resource sitting close at hand.

Employees hold tremendous power when it comes to brand advocacy. Companies can rave about how innovative and groundbreaking their product or service is, but consumers will continue to trust the word-of-mouth recommendation from a personal source, whether it’s a friend, family member or social media follower. Employees fall into the same category. While employees may not know the consumer on a personal level, they often serve as a relatable and trustworthy face for the brand they represent. When employees share company content on their personal social media channels, it signals to their networks that you’re a brand they can trust. By promoting company content on their personal social media channels, employees not only humanize the brand, but they create a genuine sense of authenticity towards that brand.

By incorporating employees into a brand awareness strategy, companies can extend their reach further than they can through their own official channels. Put simply, a company’s social reach can only go so far. By including several employees into the mix, a single post can reach an employee’s entire network, increasing engagement and exposing the company brand to those who may not otherwise see it. As an added bonus, sharing gives employees a feeling of brand ownership and pride, making them much more likely to stick around and continue to produce quality work.

Much like marketing teams evaluate their buyer personas, consider analyzing employee personas to take your branding to the next level. If you see measurable results from incorporating employees into your brand awareness strategy, it may be worth evaluating why your employees’ social reach is performing so well with your content. Replicate those personas and watch your brand shoot through the roof!

Interested in learning more about specific strategies to get your employees more involved in company branding? Let us know!